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    The Steel-Worker
    by Berton Braley

    Wherever new bridges are flinging
        Their spider-web skein to the skies;
    Where the steel ships are made for the business of trade;
        Where the skyscrapers gauntly arise;
    Where the cranes lift the twenty-ton girders
        And the red rivets hiss through the air--
    From Chile to Nome and from China to Rome,
        The steel-worker's sure to be there.

                "Hey you!"
                    (So the foreman said)
                "Watch the way you're doin' there;
                    Use your bloomin' head.
                Lower her! Now let'er go!
                    Ram the rivets through."
                (That's the way they do the job,
                    Do it proper, too.)

    This week you will find him on Broadway
        Some forty floors upward or so,
    Where the men seem to crawl on just nothing at all
        When you watch from the sidewalk below.
    Next week he'll be starting for Egypt,
        This viewer of cities and men,
    With his money all spent he is fully content
        So long as he's moving again.

                "Hey you!"
                    (Hear the foreman call)
                "Swing her over--hold here there!
                    Hoist a bit that's all.
                Drop her now, but drop her slow.
                    Now you've got her true."
                (That's the way they do the job,
                    Do it proper too.)

    His passport's the card of his union
        Wherever he happens to land,
    His home is the spot where a job's to be got,
        For the skill of his head and his hand;
    No task is too distant to tackle,
        No chance to outlandish or dim;
    He carelessly goes like the wind as she blows,
        And the world has no terrors for him.

                "Hey you!"
                    (Hear the foreman shout)
                "Watch the girder overhead!
                    Clear the Way--LOOK OUT!
                Hi, you fool, get out o' that!
                    Almost got him--whew!"
                (That's the way they do the job,
                    Do it proper, too.)

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